Free Republic

ROME (Christian Examiner) – The leader of Catholics worldwide believes most people on the planet have two things in common – a belief in "God" and faith in love to overcome differences of belief. That is why, in a new video urging prayer for interfaith understanding, Pope Francis calls for greater religious dialogue among those worldwide "who declare themselves believers." The video, however, features four of the pontiff's friends from Argentina who are of different faiths, among them a Buddhist, a Jew, a Catholic, and a Muslim, raising the question of what or who the pontiff believes is authentically God....

Congresswoman Mia Love is keeping her promise to give the people of Utah a stronger voice in the legislative process. She has introduced a bill that would only allow legislation to contain one subject at a time. "No bill shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title."

Leaders of Eastern European states opposed to Germany's open-door refugee policy have been quick to tell Germany 'we told you so' after the Cologne sexual assaults. Influential politicians across Eastern Europe have pointed to the Cologne attacks, in which men of Middle Eastern appearance allegedly sexually assaulted over a hundred women, as proof that Germany's open-door refugee policy has been a mistake. As Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks to reach a consensus on a quota system, whereby refugees would be divided up among European countries, the mood in Eastern Europe has now hardened against such proposals, with some governments saying they...

Exclusive: ‘Hillary Clinton Took Me Through Hell,’ Rape Victim Says The woman at the center of the scandal over Hillary Clinton’s defense of an alleged child rapist speaks out in depth for the first time. Hillary Clinton is known as a champion of women and girls, but one woman who says she was raped as a 12-year-old in Arkansas doesn’t think Hillary deserves that honor. This woman says Hillary smeared her and used dishonest tactics to successfully get her attacker off with a light sentence—even though, she claims, Clinton knew he was guilty. The victim in the 1975 sexual abuse...

Since the scores of New Year's Eve sexual attacks on German women by hundreds of men identified as Arab or North African, the left in Germany has faced a dilemma: which to fight for first -- women's human rights or multiculturalism? This was the same dilemma that faced British authorities between 1997 and 2013. During those six years at least 1,400 girls from the age of 11 in just one English city (Rotherham, population 275,000) were raped by gangs of men, nearly all of whom were immigrants (mostly from Pakistan) or their sons. But British authorities kept silent. Why? In...

Can a socialist president live in a mansion like White House? Sure, it’s just public housing, Bernie Sanders says

Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton by 14 points in New Hampshire less than a month before the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, a new poll finds. According to a Monmouth University survey released on Tuesday, the Vermont senator takes 53 percent support over the former secretary of State at 39 percent. Clinton led the same poll in November with 48 percent support over Sanders, who was at 45 percent.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's supporters have reportedly begun poll-testing lines of attack on Donald Trump. Cruz has largely avoided speaking ill of Trump, but may have begun looking for an opening to go after the reality television star atop the polls. Iowans received a message-testing phone call on Monday, RealClearPolitics reported, which sought answers about several possible lines of attack. The call asked respondents about whether Trump was a liberal pretending to be a conservative and his comments about Christianity. The call also reportedly raised the issue of Trump's positions on abortion, eminent domain and healthcare. Cruz, who often decries...

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve handed over a record $97.7 billion in profits to the Treasury Department in 2015, according to preliminary figures released Monday.

In more than a dozen states, House and Senate primary elections will happen on the same ballot with the presidential race - timing that could pose a challenge for incumbent candidates in intra-party battles. Presidential candidates such as New York City real estate mogul Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are hoping to lure new, anti-establishment voters to the polls, a change that would skew the kinds of voters candidates will face. "The S.E.C. states," said Midwest-based Republican consultant James Harris, using the nickname for the group of southern states that share the March 1 primary date, "will have...

In Donald J. Trump's first television ad of the 2016 campaign, released last week, a photo of Hillary Clinton and President Obama flashes across the screen, followed by stark black-and-white images of the San Bernardino, Calif., attackers, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. "The politicians can pretend it's something else," the ad's narrator says. "But Donald Trump calls it radical Islamic terrorism. That's why he's calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what's going on." The ad also promises that Mr. Trump will stop illegal immigration by "building a wall on...

In the 14 months since her story shocked the world, Jackie has been at the heart of a national debate about sexual assaults on college campuses, has become embroiled in a media scandal, and is the central figure in a series of defamation lawsuits. Yet there’s one important fact missing about Jackie, the young woman who concocted a harrowing story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity: her full name. News organizations have declined to reveal Jackie’s full identity since her now-discredited story appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in November 2014. Her single-name identity — just Jackie...

Good Morning/Afternoon,megaHappy65thBirthdayRushFromBiggirlAndFreeperRushThreadCommunitydittos And PING!

There have been plenty of articles on this site and elsewhere, explaining why Donald Trump—as the non-politician, not beholden to special interests—has taken such a commanding lead in the polls. Likewise, many Republicans, who are either flat-out liberal, or simply give lip service to conservative values, are being called out as “Republicans In Name Only…RINOs.” At the same time, much less dissension is visible on the Democratic side. Let’s explore this situation, bearing in mind that any elucidation of the RINO phenomenon must acknowledge the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. As such, we must take care to define our terms carefully....

In sports, if a game plan is not working, the coach changes it. In medicine, if a course of treatment does not cure a disease, doctors try a different approach. In government, failure means nothing. Government keeps cash flowing with little regard for results. In government, failure endures. In an attempt to change our approach to poverty and to combat the long-held liberal accusation that conservatives care only about tax cuts for the rich and cutting programs for the poor, the Jack Kemp Foundation sponsored a forum last weekend in Columbia, South Carolina. Led by Speaker of the House Paul...

It's a cliche to say that democratic states can't function properly without an informed electorate. But it’s absolutely true. And this is why, heading into the 2016 election year, I'm nervous about the future. With Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential contenders, even many Republican die-hards are shaking in their boots.But Trump isn't the cause, just the symptom. The deeper cause is a strain of anti-intellectualism that runs through the roots of American culture. And while this strain is found on both sides of the political spectrum (see some liberals on vaccines and chemtrails), it's mostly concentrated among religious conservatives...

When Cruz was my constitutional law student at Harvard, he aced the course after making a big point of opposing my views in class — arguing stridently for sticking with the original meaning against the idea of a more elastic living Constitution whenever such ideas came up. I enjoyed jousting with him, but Ted never convinced me — nor did I convince him. At least he was consistent in those days. Now, he seems to be a fair weather originalist, abandoning that method’s narrow constraints when it suits his ambition”… ~ Laurence H Tribe (Harvard)

State Department officials will begin releasing thousands of emails provided by Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, starting in March. The agency agreed to produce all 29,000 pages of Abedin's private emails by April 2017 in court documents filed late Monday evening. Using a more drawn-out timeline than the one applied to the high-profile monthly releases of Clinton's emails, the State Department will review and release roughly 400 pages of Abedin's emails each month between March 2016 and April of next year. However, the agency will not be publishing all of Abedin's emails online, as it has done...

Tuesday, January 12, 2016: GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, IA at the UNI West Gym at 6:00 PM CST. Watch the live stream and replay of the event at the URL listed here. We will list additional live threads. The best has been Fox10 Phoenix. This is the latest polling: Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are locking in their lead among Iowa likely Republican Caucus participants, with Trump at 31 percent and Cruz at 29 percent, while U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida trails...

Jay is described as "an American statesman, Patriot, diplomat, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, signer of the Treaty of Paris, and first Chief Justice of the United States (1789–95)." He was also the United States Minister to Spain from September 27, 1779 to May 20, 1782 where three of his children were born: "The happy marriage of John and Sarah Jay produced six children: Peter Augustus, born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1776; Susan, born and died in Madrid after only a few weeks of life, in 1780; Maria, born in Madrid in 1782; Ann, born...